P.F.S. Post

Maximum Post-Avant

Steve Halle (Palatine, Illinois, USA): Three Prose Poems

#1

dear dangerfeld,remember this riddle: in an opera box, Genius and Tyranny compete with constant elbows and jostles. the audience enraptured by distracting commotion misses the simple melody of dramas. by interwoven discourse, dinosaurs. the short arms flagellate an imperfection. a mixture of metallic materials contained in a matrix of zinc. perfect creatures and an extinction of teeth. remembrancing in a pac-man world i know the location of all the ghosts. yet still misstep. a failure to position my yellow orb in space and time. nowadays, memory is so first-person shooter. i see what i see but lurkers inhabit a finite beyond. like an infancy. no one remembers the self they create until they remember period. what if i created a beast of myself? o the pains of personhood! in the darkroom, i'm enamored of the moment before the chemicals bring forth image. then later the bubbles of a picture as it burns. in the infrared, i hear voices of the maestro. if the opera fails to satisfy, sleep. yet be forewarned, the fight goes on and despite a sharp rise in merchandise sales for the third quarter, Genius is well behind. when you awake, you will feel between scream and song. suspended like swung semiotics. fevered and forgotten,seria

#2

lustthrust as lastgasp of genial weather aflame to falling out bobby pins her hair is not flame-retardent. the heirs to a succession of depression dinkdrift along, caught in eddies the ditties in rivers of convolution. what said differs from what did in painful change and falling hipswell and sore and naming. she of no name not Arabella. if a spring comes after, it will be of declaring and declaratives. leaves and snow are white noise unheard. a leaf hits a lake wave the rushcrush an if makes sense it's not so for softening. underneath depression: lichens a lake a surface blind to flux nevertheless o Saussure declares of depth: deep fulfillment does no more than clarify our deepest longings. an assignation is thrill assigned to guilt in unlit fires the hermitage burns. a woman by my blue or her black knows or conscious of her aspect a leaf flutters away undecided wind a tree leaf aflame thinks "tongue-of-the-mind" awhirl in flutterflux autumn yields to the flavor of falling gone winter gone barren no buds beyond what beauty gone balded.

#3

myspace is aself athwart its own purgatorio. in dormancy transparency a her augmentations. silkspun in black expensive those unshy pithy about bulges. or labial trims. tree analogous to phases: root of imagniation, trunk of reality suspended betwixt, braches and leaves of a false consequenced real. shelter from the inclemency of season or barbarity of others. in a time of flame, all is pendulous. a season screams and Damoclesian. before a fifteen minutes. what does she think of how I think she thinks I view her? perceiving the leaves smells a whisper of burning. a falls is no nosegay not hinting at betrothal. not even in catching. now is the time to play Doctor. male enhancement a victor more than nature allows. what lies beyond or what crazy buds a throbbing star what darkness we follow what into cocooning discovery. on a possible other side a digital shell buzzes. self atop self a god-making god runs amuck. click upon click a pile. a sour smell crumbs on a sweatshirt.

Timothy Yu (Chicago/Toronto, USA/Canada): Four Poems

9/1/07to Helene

There’s a green dustcover over every placeThat seems worth going back to, pilledBy thinking, candy-apple tart.You’ve just begun your trip aroundThe map of where you are when someRemembered patchwork drops on top of it,Catching every hook with an eyeThat glances homeward. Don’t tell us howYou’ve always wanted this to beYour starring role. CastOff your energetic plushAnd wrap one callback finger Around each ornament.That’s when you’ll really knowHow wishes rise like buriedGrains of rice or breadloafJuttings into marked-off space, Nodding spring-loaded heads alongTo this defeated beat.

9/3/07to Soham

Brown down, past half-spent dollars, wentlike ever-feather-loving doorbells. Aren’tyou going to get that? Look up foryour next homefront girl. If everygiggle was a gaggle of fleece, we’dnever know how to tie off our ownopen mouths. Now I am hailinga taxi at every dead-end streetcorner, playing “Here Comes the Guy”on my stupid box. You don’tlike it? That’s a shame. It’s meantto be repeated every thirteen dayson a bareback island shore.Shorten up those reins. Coverevery eye with wax. Wiltgreens and blues over unbearableheat. The greatest bandboxhits of 1885 are backto haunt our driving rain.Can’t you hear them betweenthe bars of this browningbreadstick cage? I can.

It was an ordinary day.Firefighters were loungingwith coffee and tape measures.The condiment table was fullystocked. Then the doorclosed. Through the wall I could hearHarry and Hermione with BruceWillis at the siteof another building explosion. Or were they calling my name?Nowhere to gobut up, I guess. My fingerswrapped the ledge like a sausage.I pulled like rowingand became a hero.

PRINTERS’ BALL BROKEN UP BY POLICEto Jen

They enter wearing poem-proof vests.Each is armed with a Poetry Magazinetotebag. In close formationthey swarm the free tables for copies of Makeand Stop Smiling. The chorusof pixies falls silent. Smokersare escorted to the loading dock.No more free half-hot dogs with everythingfor you, I'm afraid. We fleewearing nothing but hard hats and suspenders.But still the door won'tclose. Disperse, they say, disperse,like clouds in a cloudless sky.